Catharsis: Thoughts of a College Student

Friday, October 17, 2008

ALFRED E. SMITH MEMORIAL FOUNDATION DINNER

Both McCain and Obama were there. Both were funny, but Obama killed.

McCain first...

and then Obama.

Although I've been for Obama since John Edwards dropped out of the Democratic primary race, if I had been undecided before watching this, Obama would have clinched it. For me, ties go to whoever's funnier.

I just finished downloading and installing the patch (took 2 fucking days on Verizon DSL D:< ), and haven't played yet. This is only my initial reaction to what stood out from amidst the many minor talent and skill tweaks, writing each point as I read the relevant patch note.

MAIN GAME MECHANICS* Achievements. "Explore the map completely" should be one. I'd go for that.* Hit and Spell Hit, Crit and Spell Crit, and Haste and Spell Haste have been merged into three stats. This is an attempt to reduce the number of items required to cover one class's disparate talent trees. For example, certain items are now equally useful to a Moonkin druid as to a Feral druid.

DRUIDS* You can now Entangling Roots indoors. Underused before, for that very reason. Smart.* Feral Charge can be used in Cat form. I don't even wanna THINK about how broken that's going to be in conjunction with Prowl.* Feral Swiftness indoors. Yay.* Nature's Grasp now a base skill. Once again, I guess no one was using it. I probably still won't.* Druids get an non-cooldown rez!

HUNTERS* Two more stable slots, for a total of 5 pets.* Pets get their own talent trees? Someone's been busy.* Viper aspect changed. Half damage, but each shot regens based on weapon speed.* Disengage now makes you jump backwards. I can't wait to see someone accidentally fall off a cliff because of this.* "If a hunter tames a pet that is more than five levels beneath their own level, the pet will then have their level increased to five levels beneath the hunter’s own level." But will Keahrde's lv.56 owl be retroactively raised to 65 because of this?* The pet loyalty system was eliminated. Does that mean we no longer have to feed them?* Scattershot is a Survival talent now? Boo!

MAGES* Blast Wave adds Knockback.* Evocation cooldown reduced to 5 minutes. Somehow I think it STILL won't be enough.* No new spells?

PALADINS* Some Blessings are now Hands. No doubt this will cause confusion. However, It appears now that a paladin can cast both Salvation and Might/Wisdom on the same target.* Seals and Judgements have been completely revamped. So much for stacking Seal of Light and Judgement of Light for extra healing. Now There are Three Judgements, they're instant, Seals are no longer consumed by any of them.* Summoned mounts are now free. Warlocks, likely the same.

PRIESTS* Holy Fire now faster cast, more powerful, has cooldown.* Holy Nova is cheaper.* Lightwell renew now only breaks if any one attack hits for more than 30% health. It might actually be useful now.* Prayer of Mending can crit now.

ROGUES* Dagger and Fist Weapon spec merged.* Dual Wield spec is now available at lv10.* "Energy regeneration should now be smoother." What does this mean? Instead of +20/2sec, it will be something like more ticks for less energy? +5/0.5sec? +1/0.1 sec?* Mace spec no longer stuns. THAAANK YOUUUUUUU!!!!!* No longer brew your own poisons. Poisons are now available from vendors.

WARLOCKS* Demons no longer need to be trained. Poor Spackle Thornberry, put out of business by the devs.* Doomguards now 20% more HP.* Fel Armor no longer increases healing on you; retains +spell damage. +Healing on you now on Demon Armor.* Felhunters get a special attack: Shadow Bite.

WARRIOR* Mace spec, again, no longer stuns.* Major disciplines (Retailation, Shield Wall, Recklessness) now down to 12 seconds, cooldown reduced from an hour to 5 minutes.

OTHER STUFF* Inscription now available.* Vanity Pets and mounts no longer take up item slots? So my kitty is now essentially a spell?!?* Quests can be shared at any distance. About time already.* /cower has an animation. Maybe now any Horde that see me use it may back off. But somehow I think the opposite is more likely.* My AddOns are all broken AGAIN, No doubt.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

SOCIAL NETWORKS: LET'S TRY THIS ONE MORE TIME...

I have not been a big fan of social networks. MySpace quickly degraded into a cesspool and Facebook isn't faring too well either. Even the kind of network one would think I might be all over -- one focused on gaming, whose name I can't remember and whose bookmark I can't find -- suffered the same fate: I created an account, checked it a few times, then forgot about it the first week.

There's a saying in the Unix world, a response to the allegation that Unix and its derivatives aren't user-friendly: "It is user-friendly, it's just not as promiscuous about who it calls its friends." I feel the same way about random contacts on social networks. Even if we've never met in real life, never talked in some corner of the internet...we can still be called 'friends'? If it were 'contacts' I might be more willing to add everyone and his mother to my contacts list. But unless we've had some kind of connection, 'friend' is not quite appropriate.

I bring this all up because the whole join-a-social-network-and-then-forget-about-it thing has started again. This time, it's Atheist Nexus that's the culprit. We'll see how long this one lasts. My page is here.

Monday, June 23, 2008

FAREWELL GEORGE

George Carlin1937-2008

"If I had my choice of how to die, I'd like to be sitting on the cross-town bus and just suddenly burst into flames."

"Thanks to our fear of death in this country, I won't have to die...I'll pass away. Or I'll expire like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital, they'll call it a 'terminal episode'. The insurance company will refer to it as 'negative patient care outcome'. And if it's the result of malpractice, they'll call it a 'therapeutic misadventure'."

"When I die, I don't want to be buried, but I don't want to be cremated either. I wanna be blown up. Put me on a pile of explosives and blow me up. Or throw my body from a helicopter. That would be fun. One stipulation: wherever I land, you have to leave me there. Even if it's on the mayor's lawn. Just let me lie there. But keep the dogs away."

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...and you finish off as an orgasm."

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

FIREFOX 3 IS OUT TODAY

And they added exactly the feature I needed: ability to save all tabs on close. No longer will I have to kill the process from the task manager to avoid reconstructing my 25-tab setup in a new session.

The tab scrollbar is pretty sweet too.

Mozilla promised that they would make Firefox3 use less memory, I can see some improvement already. As I closed Firefox 2 to update, I had 20+ tabs open and the program took up around 160,000K. Firefox 3 has cut that nearly in half, down to 87,800K.

On an unrelated note, Mozilla is hoping to set a record for most software downloaded in a 24-hour period coinciding with Firefox3's release. So if you were thinking of switching, now's a good time. This geek recommends it.

Friday, June 06, 2008

The premise: six days after The Rapture(TM), the website will send out emails to everyone on a subscriber's address list, informing them that they've been left behind.

"We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system."

Many questions come to mind.

How dense do they think we are that we won't notice that a significant number of people are gone for six days?What would happen if two or less of the operators get raptured and keep logging in to keep the system going?Could a bit of coordinated mischief cause a false positive? Malicious crackers and script kiddies could have a lot of fun here.Why does it only let you inform 62 people at once? I guess fundies wouldn't want to associate with that many unsaved people. Even so, would you have to get a second account for more people?

But most importantly, why didn't I think of charging fundies $40/year for a glorified (no pun intended) FTP server/mass-mailer that will likely never be used? I bet the guy who thought this up could easily have charged $20/month and evangelicals would have dutifully paid.

So here's my proposition for a similar premise: Customers can pay $5 to add an email address to the list. And the mailer sends out this:

Dear Friend,

If you're reading this email, then the Rapture hasn't happened yet. But a concerned Christian, (insert the name of whoever signed this email up), wants you to know that there's still time.

(and here we have some stock give-your-life-to-Jesus boilerplate)

from your friends at RaptureMail

Daily. Or better, for a higher price, you can pay to send the email every 6 hours. But the real beauty is that the spammed knows who's ultimately responsible and can "thank" them accordingly.